New York’s Tech Valley (Albany, Schenectady, Troy, Saratoga Springs) held its inaugural Social Media Breakfast on Friday, June 19, where more than 60 social media enthusiasts gathered to learn from a panel of talented speakers. The discussion was moderated by Amy Mengel and featured Mike Germano of Carrot Creative, Rhea Drysdale from Outspoken Media and Stuart Foster from The Lost Jacket.
View from the panelist's table, from Mike Germano
The conversation focused on creative ways of using different social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, strategies for promoting local businesses through social media, and discussing the potential of mobile apps in reaching audiences. Attendees came from a variety of backgrounds, including higher education, state government, software, travel and hospitality, PR and advertising agencies, law and theater. Many attendees live-tweeted the event with the #smbtv hashtag (transcript here).
Generous sponsorship from AllOverAlbany.com and SUNY Cobleskill made the event possible. The event drew a huge amount of interest and the available seats were sold-old in under three days. A larger venue is in the works for the second event, which will be held in August. Those interested in attending are encouraged to follow @smbtv on Twitter or join the Facebook group for updates. You can also contact SMB-TV founder Amy Mengel if you have questions, ideas, speaker opportunities or potential venues for future Social Media Breakfasts in Tech Valley.
Our most recent social media breakfast in Appleton, WI effectively doubled in size from a nascent group of 12-15 to a group of nearly 30. The topics of the event were divided between a discussion of some of the questions that came up from our “What the *Tweet*” event in Green Bay and an in depth discussion of the nuances of Twitter.
We always ask the group to go around and do some quick introductions and to share the ‘question of the day’ that they brought with them to the event. Much of the information that people are seeking is to know more about what others are doing with social media in the area. I suppose that the SMB is a great place to learn that sort of thing!
We’ve set a date for the next meeting of July 9th. We’ll be doing our first actual ‘presentation’ by sharing a few examples of ’social media toolkits’ that people are using to leverage social media for their business.
The 5th session of Social Media Breakfast San Diego turned out to be a dynamic, animated session about how social media changes the way we engage and interact with others. Bryan Person, founder of Social Media Breakfast Boston back in 2007 and social media evangelist for LiveWorld, spoke and lead today’s discussion.
Bryan started off asking, Is there this sort of collision between our work lives and personal lives etc. that prevent us from blogging about what we’re really doing, how we’re really feeling and who we really are? There are all these different people in our lives, friends, family, church mates, bar buddies etc., so how do these different groups of people change the way we’re creating our content. Do we want certain people to see things while others not? Are we essentially assuming a role when we Tweet or blog creating this sort of “reality star personality” as one member referred to it? If we have to be diligent and worry about who we are going to offend is it the real “you”? The question was raised, how much of yourself is really in your content? It also raised the question of whether or not people are really trying to get to know you or simply trying to get more followers. Twitter as a tool was built to have useful effective conversations between individuals, but it seems to have lost its authenticity if it’s the latter.
There was a lot of great feedback and insight surrounding this topic. The discussion was very energetic. You can view the discussion at
We also went over our top 10 in 10 and found some great new things happening in social media this past month. Here is our list,
1. Stweets: Google Street View and Twitter: Takes the coordinates posted by a Twitter app and uses data to find the approximate location Tweet came from on a Google street view image.
2. Twitter removes a feature: The change which removes the option to view “half conversations” between someone you follow and someone you don’t. (hastwitterfixedrepliesyet.com)
3. YouTube Tool: YouTube lets you put 10’s and 100’s of videos into rows and columns. Just enter a YouTube video ID and frame width for each “piece” of the mosaic.
4. Starbucks brews traditional, viral ad mix in its biggest ad push in history: A challenge to customers to be the first to post a photo of a Starbucks poster on Twitter. Competition: $100 million McCafe line.
5. Climber scales Mt. Everest while Tweeting: Gavin Bate is taking Twitter up Mt. Everest. He is selling Tweets to advertisers to raise money for charity. (myeverestchallenge.com)
6. Church promotes social media during sermon: A church in Charlotte, NC allowed members to bring their phone to Easter Sunday service and post to Twitter throughout the service.
7. Susan Boyle, the biggest YouTube sensation ever: The appearance of Susan on the show, Britain’s Got Talent. The YouTube video is approaching levels of some of the biggest viral hits of all time.
8. Social Media Comes to Town Hall: Portland, Oregon’s County Chair is looking for a Social Media Coordinator. Local residents are.
9. The Elusive Justin Timberlake’s Mother’s day video: The follow up to one of YouTubes and NBC’s, D*ck in a Box. NBC no longer has a YouTube channel and has posted the clip to its website.
10. Twitter the movie, 140: Irish filmmaker, Franmk Kelly is creating a feature-length documentary inspired by the connectivity and synchronicity that Twitter users experience.
11. Bonus! Featured Tool: Pittsburgh Steelers quartback Ben Roethlisberger had a digital doppelganger creating false identities across claiming he had been diagnosed with skin cancer.
Think Together, an after school program was the winning nomination for our non profit feature project. Nadia Flores, Skyped in and gave the group a brief overview of the organization and its social media challenges.
Rebecca, from Parker White Inc. briefly shared with the group their Hansen’s Natural Soda viral campaign they’ve recently launched. Anyone can submit a photo of themselves with Hansen’s Soda, rules apply. There will be a grand prize of 5,000 dollars for the winner. Please visit, www.hansenslovessandiego.com for more details. Contest ends June 7, 2009.
We ended the session with Feedback 5, which allowed a few people to present the issues their facing in their own social media campaigns.
This morning turned out to be a great success!
A big thanks to Milano Coffee Co. for having us and especially a big thanks to Bryan Person and LiveWorld for speaking and sponsoring the breakfast this month.
Next session: TBD More details will be available on the SMBSD website soon!
More than 50 people attended the first Charlotte Social Media Breakfast on Tuesday, May 12th at the Dilworth Neighborhood Grille. It was a lively group discussing formats for future breakfasts, networking with new friends (and old) and upcoming social media events.
The next breakfast will be Tuesday, June 9th from 7:30 am to 9:00 am at the Dilworth Neighborhood Grille. *All future events will be held on the second Tuesday of every month.
The June speaker is Geno Church from Brains on Fire. Geno is Brains on Fire Word of Mouth Inspiration Officer and is responsible for developing word of mouth, buzz, viral and evangelism strategies for the agency’s clients. In his 13+ years with Brains On Fire, Geno has helped build word of mouth into the identities of brands including Fiskars Brands, Rawlings Sporting Goods, National Family Partnership and Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities.
Geno has been recognized as a thought leader in both the identity and word of mouth realms, and has received awards from numerous organizations.
Registration for the June 9th event will be live after Friday, May 22nd - please visit http://smbcharlotte.eventbrite.com at that time to register.
Panelists Simon Salt, Natanya Anderson, and Lionel Menchaca and moderator Aaron Strout led an engaging discussion on the value of content marketing for brands at Austin’s 7th Social Media Breakfast, held Friday morning, May 8th, at la Madeline Country French Cafe in North Austin.
Some of the highlights:
Aaron (@AaronStrout), CMO at Powered, noted what what good content marketing is not: “a company trying to force its tongue down your throat” as soon as you introduce yourself.
For Simon (@IncSlinger), the CEO of IncSlingers, the challenge for brands is to produce not just “good content” but “social content,” where the ownership of the content is actually unclear. A good example: Disney’s Moms Panel.
Natanya (@NatanyaP), VP of Content of Powered, explained that most brands aren’t passion brands (Disney being an obvious exception), and that good content can serve as the “proxy for the passion.” She also argued that content should support users “lifestyle needs” over time, and not only during the period of the transaction.
Lionel (@LionelAtDell), chief blogger at Dell, recounted the company’s early efforts in social media and the key lesson his team has learned along the way: “content needs to be shareable.”
at this month’s waco social media breakfast,Jay Ehret, talked about how to choose a social medial channel for business. we had a great turnout with 26 people there. here are my notes from jay’s very informative presentation:
the cluetrain manefesto is the “old testatment” of social media discussing the age of conversations and how markets are conversations. groundswell is the “new testament” of social media
because social media is low cost to free, many companies are tempted to “do it all to make sure we are doing the right thing” but, there is a time cost involved to do social media correctly. once you choose a social media channel you are now engaged with that channel.
so, how do you choose a social media channel? choose it based on your challenge
On a gorgeous Tuesday spring morning in Boston, the city’s social media community gathered at PUMA City on the waterfront to hear from speakers who are “rocking the boat” in their work .
In this video interview recorded shortly after C.C.’s presentation, he talks about the opportunities for brands to better connect with their fans online.
Video: Bob Collins puts a wrap on SMB13
As the breakfast wound down, I asked SMB Boston organizer Bob Collins for his thoughts on the event.
The forth session of Social Media Breakfast San Diego had a great turn out this morning, with a bunch of fresh new faces! We had 3 people present their nominations for non profit organizations that they felt our group could help. The submissions were; San Diego Hospice Palliative Medicine, Think Together and finally Move SD.
Our new format is in place and the group dynamic is beginning to shine. We spent the first 30 minutes filling up on coffee and pastries. The next 20 minutes going over our Top 10 in 10 social media news bites like, Ashton Kutcher’s defeat over CNN, Oprah’s debut on Twitter, Google’s experiment with viral marketing and other great social media topics.
Melanie Gordon, VP of Sales and Marketing at Internet marketing Inc. Spoke and during her speach she presented a case study she has currently been working on illustrating how she helped @Sunflowerguy build their product with social media strategies. Follow her @melgordon
You can view some of Melanie’s presentation on the Ustream clip below:
We ended the session with Feedback 5, which allowed a couple people to discuss the challenges they are currently facing with their social media efforts in their own work. If you’re interested in following the conversations from the session you can follow our hashtag and view our sample below:
This morning was a great success.
A big thanks to Milano Coffee Co. for having us and an especially big thanks to Melanie Gordon for speaking and sponsoring the breakfast this month.
Next session will be May 27,2009 and more details will be available on the SMBSD website soon.
We had a great group of about a dozen people from the Appleton & Green Bay area at this inaugural meeting of the New North Social Media Breakfast. It was a lively discussion with some great ideas shared and, as is often the case in social media discussions, we left with as many new questions to think about as we did answers!
What was most interesting about the group (and it was an interesting group!) was that we came from such diverse backgrounds. Education, non-profit, healthcare, real estate, ad agencies and so on.
We discussed the topic of what organizations need in terms of social media expertise at the ‘corporate’ level and concluded, albeit at odds with the article that instigated the discussion, that social media expertise is critical to have within an organization, and more importantly, that the social media expertise should be distributed throughout the organization, not held in the hands of the default guru in the organization.
Kiar, @macdesign13, had a great point about FOCUS! In order to ‘do social media well’, we need to focus on the tools that matter to us, and to our audience, and then put energy into those.
Thanks again to everyone who attended and contributed to the discussion! Thanks also to Abby, @abbyweidert, and Greg, @greglinn of the Weidert Group for signing on as co-conspirtors to help grow the group and keep it together!
Check out the New North SMB Ning group for the ongoing conversation of the group. Our next meetup will be on May 5th - location TBD.
The 3rd installment of Social Media Breakfast San Diego proved to be a dynamic session of learning about recent buzz within the social media space, exchanging ideas about campaigns and bringing on a social project. The first thirty minutes were filled with coffee, pastries and croissants over networking. The new format was definitely well received as we cut it down from two hours to one and a half to keep the session focused and collaborative. With new segments like “Top 10 in 10“, we covered ghost twittering, Skittles.com, Twitterhawk, unfriending and other social media topics. As the session neared the end we did “Feedback in 5“, which allowed people to bring up challenges they were having within their own social media initiatives. I’d say it was a hit. Here are some photos from the session as well as some of the buzz on Twitter:
Our most recent social media breakfast in Appleton, WI effectively doubled in size from a nascent group of 12-15 to a group of nearly 30. The topics of the event were divided between a discussion of some of the questions that came up from our “What the *Tweet*” event in Green Bay and an in depth discussion of the nuances of Twitter.
